Maybe there's a flip-side of good news here: the last time France elected a socialist president was 1980 (Mitterand; he was reelected twice and left office in the 90's).

The last time America elected a capitalist was also 1980. If America is the inverse of France in 2012 -- as she should be in an ideological sense -- she will elect a capitalist for President and Ron Paul or Gary Johnson will be sitting in the Oval Office, come January, 2013.

One can dream, can't he?

As I read the news tonight of France's socialist victory, I thought to myself: "at least France is honest enough to call their socialist party, the Socialist Party." Do you think that too?

As for now in America burning (as it was for France today) it's looking like Statism-Lite-Republican (Mittens) may likely lose in a close 2-3% election to The Real Socialist Obamanation Deal...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's action-packed six-year term has ended in defeat at the hands of Socialist challenger François Hollande.

Hollande, who ran on pledges to raise income taxes, took a little less than 52 percent to Sarkozy's little more than 48 percent in the runoff election.

Hollande has promised to raise income tax rates from 41 percent to 75 percent. He has also pledged to accelerate the departure of French troops from Afghanistan. His election comes at a time when unprecedented levels of public debt coupled with work-averse political cultures are threatening to break up of the eurozone.

Updated x2: Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge on today's French Socialist news and why we should actually be paying more attention to Greece at this point:

While most will be following what appears to be an almost certain Hollande victory in the French presidential runoff elections tomorrow (InTrade odds around 10%), it is very likely that the Greek election will have a greater acute impact on the political and financial facade of Europe, especially in the short term. As we noted in what we dubbed our first (of many) Greek election previews, the biggest problem facing the new political regime will be its near certain inability to form a coalition government (with just 32.6% of the vote going to PASOK and New Democracy) that does not undo most of what has been achieved through popular sweat and tears over the past 2 years to assist Europe's bankers in transferring what little Greek wealth remains to fund the insolvent European bank balance sheets. This in turn could begin the latest cascading contagion waterfall, which coupled with an anti-austerity drive emanating from a newly socialist France will threaten to topple Angela Merkel's carefully constructed European hegemony.

As Reuters explains: "If the two parties fail to win a big enough majority to go into a coalition, they will have to woo groups opposed to the bailout, raising fears that Greece will renege on its promises to international lenders and head down a path towards bankruptcy and an exit from the euro, with dire contagion risks for other crisis hit EU states like Spain and Italy. A record 8-10 parties could enter parliament and four small groups are vying to become kingmakers after the poll." And the reason why we believe many more elections are coming is that "New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras is expected to win about 25 percent of the vote but insists he wants to rule alone. Analysts say that if he comes close to the numbers he needs he may be tempted to push for another snap election." And so on, allowing Greece to slowly enter a period of political vacuum. Yet unlike Belgium, it is unlikely that Greece can persist under anarchy, especially with another critical event coming due: a €430 million payment on an international law bond that matures on May 15, and whose owners have held out from the PSI process (remember that? apparently not all has been swept under the rug). In fact we now know that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund could very well be the entity that will demand payment and when it doesn't get it will promptly proceed to sue Greece.

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